Thursday, December 25, 2014

In some austere study, in an ancient armchair silhouetted
by the moonlight, there sits a man. Or rather, what was once a man. The ghastly
figure that now lingered in this place had clearly left its humanity behind
long ago. The figure had a horrible, scarred and stretched visage, complimented
by inhumanly pale blue skin, which wavered and flickered in the light with a
slight translucence. He – for it had indeed been a he, ages past – was clothed
in warped and disfigured rags whose original design was all but lost due not
just to their state of disrepair but also due to the chains. The man was
covered in giant, rust-ridden chains that crossed this way and that all around
his body in incalculable numbers. They rattled constantly, their grim, hellish
tones a constant and unceasing reminder of the twisted afterlife this
simultaneously terrifying and pitiable creature had unwillingly bought for
himself.

He was currently struggling with the phone.

“Yes, you heard me correctly” he intoned in an echoing
bass. “Yes, it still hasn’t arrived...a large pepperoni...no...it should be
under Ghost...yes, full name Herbert C. Ghost...yes...yes, stands for
Christmas...yes I’m serious...okay...okay. But I’ll call back again if it isn’t
soon...yes, goodbye.”

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

So as has sometimes happened in the past, I was suffering writer's block for a paper I didn't want to write, and in an attempt to alleviate this wrote a fake paper instead. It didn't do much to help my productivity, but it was pretty fun to write. It can be found below, unedited.

So in the last
installment of this technically-a-series-now, I introduced you to Neopets.
Apart from embarrassing breakdowns in the face of inert sacks, there wasn’t
really much interesting about it. That would be because the one feature I left
out before was the games! There are many little flash games on that particular
website, and previously I planned to give this whole shpiel on some of the good
ones and the bad ones and a much more detailed description. I...don’t really
feel like doing that now, and in fact I don’t even feel like logging back into
the website. The last time I visited that website, it broke my spirit
completely and utterly.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

So I'm taking another creative writing course this semester at college. Within this course I recently completed a nice little self contained short story in an exercise. It's fairly brief (the page limitations were strict), and I'm not coming back to revise it, but I thought some people might enjoy it. So the rest of this post in its entirety will be the aforementioned story completely unedited. Enjoy.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Have you ever played a
game that frustrated you to no end? A game where there are dozens of enemies
but they’re mostly identical? A game where irritating status ailments are
plentiful and what little enjoyment you get out of the combat is sucked dry by
the persistent hassle? A game where you enjoy yourself more using a walkthrough
because every single step is littered with obtuse bullshit triggers, so that
you can only proceed when you think of things in the way the game designers
did, as opposed to rationally in-universe? A game where, when you get down to
it, everything is a broken mess that’s “old-school” in all the wrong ways?
There’s a game like that...and it’s called Earthbound.

Have you ever played a
game that defied your expectations? A game where, for better or worse, you can
never really predict what’s going to happen next? A game where it’s in some
strange middle-ground between absurdist parody and innocent, heartfelt
story-telling? A game where there are strange but oddly compelling visuals and
sounds, where you want to keep playing just to see where it’ll take you next? A
game that can make you laugh, creep you out, and above all has an unusual
earnestness to it that embodies the phrase ‘weird but wonderful’? There’s a game
like that....and it’s called Earthbound.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

So it has been a long
time since an update as usual but I don’t want to dwell on that because there
are only so many self-deprecating jokes I can make in that vein* and you’ll
have so many better reasons to make
fun of me by the end of this article. I oft wonder what I want to write when
posting to this blog. A large part of the sporadic update rate is due to my
writing subjects being “whatever I want (so usually video games)”; as this
means I only update around “whenever inspiration strikes me, I feel like
putting in the work, and I have absolutely nothing else I need to do”. It just
so how happens that in the brief lull before the end of my most recent college
semester, all three of these requirements have been fulfilled in the form of an
idea that is stupid and silly. Fortunately for you viewers, concepts being
stupid or silly have absolutely no bearing at all on whether I write about
them! Hell, some would say they’re a sign of encouragement. So today I’m gonna’
talk to you about...Neopets.

*Note: This is a lie, I can make self-deprecating jokes on my update
rate until hell freezes over. Or better yet, until I actually update again.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Well it’s certainly been
a while, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll fabricate I mean uh, fabricate
something completely unrelated to an
explanation of my absence in the usual format, explaining why my
extremely overdue attempts at a holiday special were waylaid. But
that’s not important right now. What’s important right now is that I tell you
of exciting new ground that Genericide Inc. Enterprises LLC Ventures is going to
cover! You see, we (me) here at the headquarters (dorm room) were checking the
latest statistical information on the blog from down at the lab (I don’t have
one of those), and we (still me) discovered a fascinating fact.